Dangerous Cargo: Changes Present Challenges

Smoke fills the air at the scene of the train derailment and fire in Lynchburg.

Each year officials investigate an average of ten derailments in Virginia alone. Most involve coal or grain – cargoes unlikely to cause trouble for nearby communities, but a growing number of trains now carry oil from the Bakken region of North Dakota.

Because it contains high levels of gas, it’s more volatile than some other forms of crude, and transporting it by rail could be putting whole communities at risk.

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Sandy Hausman reports on one proposed solution to the problem.

When a train derailed in Lynchburg earlier this year, causing one tank car to explode and burn, experts said the city was lucky. The burning car fell into the James River, so the risk of a multi-car explosion was minimized. Touring the site a few days later, Governor Terry McAuliffe said the situation could have been much worse.

"If these rail cars had not tipped off and gone into the river – what if they’d tipped and gone this side – the population center. I just went by a facility and there were hundreds of kids out front."

In addition to fears of explosion and fire, he’s concerned about pollution of drinking water. At the Natural Resources Defense Council staff attorney Anthony Swift says rail tracks often parallel rivers and other waterways, and the nation saw more oil spilled in 2013 than it had in the past forty years.

“I mean you’re looking at crude oils with enormous quantities of benzene and tolene – chemicals that are known to be carcinogens and neurotoxins at very low levels.”

Firefighters believe much of the oil that spilled into the James River at Lynchburg burned off, but Richmond’s fire chief, Robert Creecy, says you could smell contamination downstream.

"We were aware that we had some odor of fuel oil that moved through the community pretty quickly. It happened at night. It wasn’t humanly possible to contain it. "

“Carriers now will use a computer model that weighs 27 factors -- the size of communities, the speeds, the conditions of tracks, the conditions of signaling systems, other potential risks along the route , to ensure that the route that is used is the most safe route for moving that product.”

"The oil is being produced in the middle of North America, and traditionally all of our refineries and our ports – all of the infrastructure to turn crude oil into products that people can use is on the coasts, and it’s in very populated areas on the coasts, so the idea that you’re going to tell the industry, ‘You can’t drive the trains through populated areas,’ That’s not going to work, because their goal is to drive it to the refineries, which are all in very populated areas."

Patricia Reilly, who speaks for the American Association of Railroads, adds the safest route may actually be through cities. "To automatically reroute a crude oil train around a less populated area does not guarantee that it’s going to ride on the most sophisticated track that is necessary for moving hazardous materials and crude oil."

And if there is an accident, experts say fire departments in smaller communities are rarely prepared to contain an explosive chemical spill. Michael Mohler is President of the Virginia Professional Firefighters Association.

"Localities in the rural areas don’t have the tax base to support a career department. They don’t get the training that’s absolutely necessary for this. They’re maintaining just a very basic training, and then when something like this hits, they’re at the mercy of the event."

Railroads do offer free training for first responders, but some communities can’t afford to pay for the time away, and others say no amount of training will prevent the disasters possible when explosive freight is moving at high speeds.

We’ll look at efforts to slow the trains and to build stronger cars in our next report.

Click here information about the CSX notice sent to Virginia's Department of Emergency Management, listing communities through which Bakken is passing.

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It’s been nearly two months since a train derailed in Lynchburg, sending a fireball into the sky above that city’s downtown and spilling oil into the James River.

Experts said the accident could have been far worse, and many communities along the state’s 3200 miles of railroad face similar dangers.

The city of Lynchburg grew and prospered for decades because freight moved easily here – first by river and then by rail. Trains were a routine part of city life, but on April 30 that routine was shattered.

Each year officials investigate an average of ten derailments in Virginia alone. Most involve coal or grain – cargoes unlikely to cause trouble for nearby communities, but a growing number of trains now carry oil from the Bakken region of North Dakota.

Because it contains high levels of gas, it’s more volatile than some other forms of crude, and transporting it by rail could be putting whole communities at risk.

For decades Americans have worried about our dependence on foreign oil and gas. By 2005 we were importing 60% of our energy, but in 2008 a new technology called horizontal hydrologic fracturing or “fracking” raised the promise of energy independence.

U.S. crude production is up 50% and imports have fallen 35%. But getting oil from a massive shale deposit in North Dakota to refineries is raising serious concerns about public safety.

Within hours of a rail crash in Lynchburg on April 30, inspectors for the state and federal governments and CSX were on the scene – trying to figure out why 17 cars derailed and one ruptured – producing flames, smoke and a significant oil spill.

Getting official answers could take 18 months, but there are clues that suggest a cause for the accident and a future course of action to improve rail safety.

In just over a year, North America has seen a dozen serious accidents involving trains that derailed while carrying flammable crude oil. One of those accidents, in Lynchburg, caused a massive fire and oil spill. In most cases, fire departments didn’t know what they were dealing with, since railroads have kept that information secret, but the federal government is now requiring them to inform states when trains of 35 cars or more, carrying oil from North Dakota or Montana, are coming through.